Pentagon Says Contractors' Security Rules Make Spying Easy

WASHINGTON — Security programs of most of the nation's 14,000 military contractors are so weak that they do little to deter espionage, a Defense Department report shows.

Spying is so easy for employees of most companies, the report says, that ''a supermarket employee may encounter far more difficulty stealing a loaf of bread.''

The 250-page study says the Defense Department should make wholesale changes in its security programs. It does not contain specific recommendations.

The regulations, it says, are ''confusing, conflicting, inflexible'' and full of ''superfluous detail.''

The Defense Department ordered the yearlong study by a group of senior departmental officials after the arrest of James Harper. He was sentenced to life in prison last year for taking classified documents from a small California military contractor and selling copies to Polish intelligence officers.

Since the study's completion one of the four people arrested in the Walker family spy case, Arthur Walker, has been charged with taking classified documents from a military contractor in Virginia and selling them to his brother, John, who is accused of selling them to Soviet agents. During the last few years, several other employees of military contractors have been convicted of espionage.

More than 16 million classified documents detailing many of the nation's most sensitive military secrets are scattered among companies nationwide that have military contracts. Almost 1.5 million civilian employees have government clearance to use the materials, and ''recent espionage cases,'' the study says, show that this material ''is of paramount interest to hostile intelligence services.''

The companies must follow Defense Department security regulations to safeguard their secret and topsecret documents, and the Defense Intelligence Service is responsible for ensuring that they do. But to police the 14,000 concerns, the service has only 225 agents nationwide.

The study concluded that:

-- Most contractors maintain no controls over the use of classified materials at night and during weekends.

-- Federal regulations, while emphasizing the secure storage of classified documents and the use of alarm systems, do not prevent cleared personnel from having unauthorized access or prevent them from removing the contents from the premises.

-- Federal regulations require no training for guards at private companies. -- About 95 percent of the classified documents are concentrated in 200 of the 14,000 contractors, and more than half the companies cleared to use classified materials have none on site.

-- Many contractors request and get secret or top-secret security clearance for employees hired to perform custodial duties and maintenance.

Because of the Walker case, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger ordered that the number of people with security clearances in the military and in private companies be cut 10 percent by Oct. 1.

L. Britt Snider, director of Pentagon security, said his office was considering other measures, including random checks of briefcases and purses of a people as they leave buildings that house classified materials. No checks are now required, and almost none are done.